


Storge

by Merkwerkee



Category: Void Jumpers (Web Series)
Genre: Alcoholism, Mourning, Unwise Decisions, absentee parenting, reunited with family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28290321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: After their father dies in the Colosseum, Myld'redd and Gawhg decide to honor his memory by also participating in the chariot races. It's only through the intervention of a dashing rogue - Tag - that they are reminded of what's really important: Family.
Kudos: 1





	Storge

Myld'redd gulped down tears as her brother winged his way up the stone steps to the platform their mother waited on.

She’d never been quite as enthusiastic as Gawhg about racing - he’d always thrived under the attention, and loved it when races went rough - but she hadn’t been about to let him go off alone the night they’d left their mother’s house. _Twins have only happened four times before in our race’s history,_ their mother had told them once when they were very young, _so you two are very, very special and you need to look out for each other. Always._

Myld'redd had suspected that pronouncement was brought on by the fact that their mother had taken to drinking after the loss of their father and couldn’t always take care of what they needed, but she never speculated out loud and simply took her mother’s advice seriously. She was the the eldest, first out of her shell by almost an hour, and she’d loved Gawhg with all her heart when she’d first seen his little head with its ridiculously oversized tusks peek out from under a shell fragment that had stuck to the top of his noggin. They’d been inseparable ever since, whether it was sleeping together under their mother’s warm wings or gallivanting in the area around their home while their mother was away getting food and bog-wine. No matter where Gawhg went, Myld'redd followed.

They’d never met their father; they hadn’t been out of the shell but an hour or two when the news had arrived that he’d died. A strange little human had come, with a wagon and a large trunk and spoken to their mother outside for a few minutes before their mother had made the worst sound Myld'redd had ever heard; a sort of keening wail that had been loud enough to pierce through thick walls and high enough to waver in and out of hearing. Their mother had come back inside carrying the chest - it had been bigger than Myld'redd at the time, though it had looked terribly small in their mother’s claws - and dripping gore from her jaws, and then gotten very drunk on bog-wine. She’d spent the next many hours telling them about their father, how wonderful he had been, how caring, how he had wanted only the best for his family.

It had been the first and last time their mother had spoken about their father, but it had left an impression on the two of them and both had wanted to know more. Speaking humanish tongues was out of the question - their jaws just didn’t move the right way - but the languages weren’t difficult to learn just by listening and Myld'redd and Gawhg had spent hours eavesdropping from the rooftops of the city to hear what they could about their father. Speed Demon, the other racers had called him, and apparently he’d won a surprising number of times - most of the racers were either dead or permanently crippled by their third race, but their father had won four times and raced more than twelve! The crowd had loved him, and they often heard stories that bemoaned his absence.

It was those stories that had lit a Fire inside Gawhg. His head had been filled with visions of following in their father’s claw marks, and making it big at the colosseum. Myld'redd couldn’t forget the noise their mother had made when she’d been told their father had died, and could see the near-perpetual stupor their mother lived in as she consumed whole barrels of bog-wine at a time, but Gawhg had been very persuasive. He finally managed to convince her nearly a year ago, and they’d snuck out of the house with a note left for their mother as to where they’d gone.

They hadn’t heard anything from her since. She’d never come to watch them race, she’d never sent them any messages or acknowledgements - if they hadn’t lived with her all their lives, it would be hard to know that they had a mother. Gawhg had been hurt, Myld'redd knew her brother well enough to see through his blunder and bluster, and Myld'redd hadn’t been overly happy about it herself. Still, the crowds loved them - a perfectly matched pair of black dragons, even though neither of them were old enough to have figured out how to spit acid yet, was a powerful draw and the races the competed in were always well-attended. It couldn’t replace the absence their mother had left in their lives, but it made bearing it a little easier.

And so they’d raced - rarely more than once a month, as the Powers That Be had deemed them exotic enough to keep only for highlight races - and talked to the other chariot pullers. The skeleton unicorns refused to speak to them at all, but the thunder lizards and reaverbirds were friendly enough, and they learned a great deal.

They hadn’t been told much about the race they’d just lost, but the thunder lizards pulling the Cold Iron cart had been bubbling about how this race was part of a Gauntlet challenge, and they their charioteers were the challengers set to try and win. Neither Myld'redd nor Gawhg had known what a Gauntlet challenge was, but they’d been set to do nothing less than their absolute best. Their charioteers were some vampires they’d raced with before, and they’d both been pretty confident about their chances.

And then the human had jumped on Gawhg.

Tears began leaking from Myld'redd’s eyes as she jumped up the last few stairs that separated her from her mother. It had been a very long time since any humans had bothered to speak to them directly, and the soft kindness of that human’s words had struck a chord. It’d been so long since she’d bothered to look at the family seating for the racers that she hadn’t realized her mother was here for the first time, until he’d said something. There was something sad about his kindness, too, something wistful like he wished his own family had shown up and Myld'redd couldn’t blame him for that as she bounded over to her mother with Gawhg hot on her heels.

“Mother! You’re here!” she roared, not caring about the other people who flinched away from the noise. She felt the impact through her mother’s hide as her brother joined them with a happy roar of his own, and for a moment all was right in the world as their mother’s wings spread over both of them. They no longer fit under her wings, not wholly, but it didn’t matter. There mother was _alive_ , and she was _warm_ , and she was _here_.

Then details started intruding. No longer was their mother’s hide soft and sleek; Myld'redd could feels bones poking into her where she was pressed against her mother’s side. Large patches of scales had given way to dry, leathery skin, and her joints popped as she shifted to let her two children get more comfortably situated. Her eyes bulged out against the tight skin around them, any fat deposits that might once have smoothed out the bumps now completely gone and her hide drawn tight around the odd contours of the skull beneath.

Gawhg apparently saw the same things Myld'redd did, his high-pitched babbling a sign of his panic. “I’m sorry mother, so sorry - I wanted to race to honor father’s memory, and I dragged Myld'redd into it. It’s all my _fault_ , we didn’t mean - I’m sorry,” he sniffled as he buried his face against her side, and their mother nuzzled him gently like she had so many times before.

“Sshhhhm shhhhh it’s all right. I’m glad you’re all right; I was so, so worried you’d end up dead in a ditch, I’m so proud you’ve come to your senses.” Her voice was warm and soothing, just like it had been so many times before and Myld'redd let it wash over her as she cuddled close to the painfully bony form of her mother.

“We’ll never race again mother, we promise. We can all go home and live together like father would have wanted us to,” Myld'redd croaked through her tears, Gawhg nodding along rapidly even as his own eyes brimmed.

Myld'redd froze when she felt her mother sigh deeply, almost seeming to collapse in on herself as the air rushed out of her. “I’m afraid that may no longer be possible,” she said, avoiding both their eyes.

Myld'redd and Gawhg exchanged a glance, puzzled, and Gawhg asked the question on both their minds. “Why is that, mother?” Myld'redd simply cuddled closer, hoping that her warmth would drive some of the sadness out of their mother’s eyes.

“I was…not doing well, after you two left. I couldn’t, couldn’t _bear_ the thought my two wonderful dragonets _dying_ for the delight of some humans, and I couldn’t _bear_ to watch and make sure you two were okay. I….I made a series of…unwise decisions, and…” she trailed off and crumpled even further, her nearly-negligible weight now resting almost wholly on Myld'redd’s shoulders.

She bore it gladly, remembering so many times when she’d been younger and her mother had been the one bearing her up - when her mother wasn’t too drunk to stand, anyway. And even when she had been, she always had a wing and a warm flank and a kind word for her two children. If her mother needed help now, it was up to the two of them to help her.

Gawhg exchanged a glance with Myld'redd, her twin having a glint in his eye that she knew so well. They’d been inseparable growing up, and working together in the arena had done nothing to dull the way their minds worked in parallel. Between the two of them they didn’t have that much money - only one winner’s purse from a low-stakes race - but they had something, and that might just be enough.

“That human - the one who helped us - I think he’s competing again,” Gawhg said, intensity in both his gaze and voice. “The lizards said something about the Gauntlet being three events. Nobody else has ever managed to take out both other chariots and win before, and I have no doubt that if he can do that then he can definitely win this next event. I know a guy, and we’ll hopefully make enough to get our home back for you mother.”

“And be a family again,” added Myld'redd firmly, and her mother tightened her wings around them both.

“I’m so proud of both of you - and I think your father would have been too,” she said. Tears spilled up out of her eyes as Gawhg gently extracted himself and took wing to find the saw-billed reaverbird who served as the bookie for the non-humans of the colosseum.

Myld'redd watched him go as she stayed huddled close to their mother, who was now openly weeping, and spared a brief prayer to the Continuum for the little human who’d helped them so much. She wish him health, and happiness, and the joy of reuniting with his own family that he’d so generously gifted them with. _May he live long and know their love as well as his own,_ she added mentally, and wound her tail around her mother’s in a warm embrace.

They were going to be okay.


End file.
